Like a Poisoned Ant Crippled by Asphyxiation

That is going to be my new bumper sticker. I feel like that is the state of modern, mature (cough, cough snicker, snicker) romantic entanglements. Not really the stuff of epic romances, we’re all much too cynical and well read for any of that stuff really. But still interesting enough to stop and watch for a few moments at least. Ants are highly intelligent creatures; you know they would make adequate husbands. They work hard; work well as a team and are pretty utilitarian in the looks department. Sure maybe they aren’t the best conversationalists. Maybe they aren’t the guy you fantasized about dating when you were a young, impressionable girl, adept at letting yourself fantasize about frivolous, wonderful things like what would Jordan Knight look like with his pants off and who would you be dating when you were in your (gulp) late 20s. But they are around, and they are fast and attentive and when you do grown up things like work a career-job and tend to the home-stead and milk the cows and paint the barn; sometimes all you have time for is some simple ant-type guy that comes over once in a while with a picnic dinner and wants to watch season one of Beverly Hills 90210 on DVD all night long.

But you know, there are only 22 episodes of 90210 season one and at some time you are going to have to stop watching 90s serial dramas and decide where to go from here. With ants, there really isn’t much choice. Ants do what ants do. Have you ever watched an ant? I mean, really watched one? I have. Extensively. The when, where, why how and really why of that are fodder for a lengthy psychiatrist visit. But, I digress. Just trust me; I have watched my share of ants. When they eat some poison; they continue their little job. The keep moving that little crumb of pita bread along the designated path until their knees start to give out. And they keep trying to go, wobbly knees and all. Then their breathing starts to become labourous. They start falling down in exhaustion and yet they keep getting up and continuing towards their goal line slow and arduously. Sometimes they make it. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they literally die trying to bring that crumb home.

Wouldn’t it be smarter to just head home and drop the pita bread? Well, an ant’s brain doesn’t work that way. It will continue on the path even though the path is going nowhere slowly. It is sad and a little, tragic. But I have little sympathy for the ant (Except that he was poisoned; that is the worst way to kill an ant; but that’s not the point). The ant is so stuck in his ways. He won’t budge from his mission. I am ant: love me or lump me!

So I’m putting it out there: single guys in their late 20s are soooo ants. Stubborn in their resolve to do thing a certain way and to keep on a path that is both uninspired and endless. The ant will continue in the relationship that sees no future and will do so through bouts of un-returned phone calls; messy, loud arguments and passionless sex.
The Ant has a high threshold for pain and abuse. He will withstand the wishy-washy behaviour of flighty and overscheduled girls. He will always be around. Because he has his eye on the goal. Wobbly knees, respiratory problems, heart attacks et al.: he just wants to score. Even if the goal is ugly; like it squeaks through the knee pads of the goalie and he has to mow her over just to get close to the net. That’s his goal. The ant would never be awarded the Lady Byng trophy for sportsmanlike conduct, if you know what I’m saying.

Okay, okay. Enough with the creepy sex metaphors and ant-bashing. What is my point, you ask? Well, my point is simple. Time is running out. We are not getting any younger. So if a relationship is going nowhere; don’t be a poisoned ant crippled by asphyxiation. Get over it. Move on. The perfect match must be out there somewhere, right? Maybe, maybe not. But I do know one thing. You won’t find him by staring at ants all day.

Somebody please help Britney Spears!

What can I say about my girl, Britney? Obviously, something is not right. Obviously she is unhappy. Obviously she is crying out for attention. I choose to believe, and jab and joust me if you must, but in my heart of hearts I believe that this is just a phase. Postpartum depression, maybe? A drug problem? Probably. Maybe she is a lesbian. Okay, that would be weird. But if she needs to gyrate naked with bull dykes and shave her head to be comfortable and happy, so be it. You hear that, Britney, be a part-time lesbian if that is what you want! ( I can’t fathom the notion that she is a full-fledged lesbian; that is just too weird. She was like the iconic teen dream for like 5 years!) Just work though all your shite Brit Brit and please come through on the other side as happy and not so…messy.

I think she is in desperate need of help. Where are all her celebrity friends, now? Justin? Madonna? K-Fed? Even Paris bailed on the sinking ship that is Britney Spears. She needs some real friends and family and fans to pull her back from the brink and get her the help she needs.

It seems like she has delved from reality and gotten lost in the camera flashes and stalkerazzi. As an amateur psychologist with a deep connection to the real Britney Spears, I would say she is showing clear signs of Michael Jackson Syndrome, or MJS. She is detached from her public persona and is unable to understand why people are incensed and worried by her recent actions. She views her actions as unreal and doesn’t fathom the consequences. This is usually brought on my super-stardom ( see orginal diagnosis Michael Jackson and later diagnosis Whitney Houston); a loss of personal connection to loved ones and family members (see Michael Jackson) and an irrational case of low self-esteem. The only treatment, I, a professional celebrity psychologist can recommend, is complete and total retreat from La La Land. ( see moderate success stories: Michael Jackson – Dubai; Whitney Houston – Atlanta).

I really believed a comeback was eminent when she Fed-Xed K-Fed; but it seems the problems with dear Brit Brit lay deeper than it seemed. Unfortunately, it seems like 2007 will not be the crowning year for Ms. Britney Spears. She needs more than just a hit album to bring her back from the edge. She needs therapy; she needs a detox; she needs to leave California all together.

I really hope Britney gets it together soon. She was so fun and cute and real. Now she has become this weird caricature of herself that I’m she barely recognizes half the time. I believe she can do it. She is a fighter and she is nice and she is still only like 25. If she puts her mind to it; she can beat this, too and come out on top; where hopefully Justin Timberlake will be waiting for her.

P.S. I love you HD!

Dear Home Depot:
Thank you for building your soul-sucking monstrosity on the idyllic grounds where my love for bargain shopping was born, K-Mart. K-mart was where I used to watch my 11-year-old friend ingest a four-pack of O Henry bars after school. K-mart is where I bought my first, and hopefully not my last, pair of black acid-wash jeans ( thank-you Gloria Vanderbilt!) K-mart is where I perfected my Ms. PacMan skills. K-Mart is where I bought my first pair of boxer-shorts for a boy (Thank-you Joe Boxer happy face boxers you helped cement a relationship of late night phone calls and furtive note passing in cadets into a solid two week romance). But you know, I’m all for progress; So I didn’t care when the spot formering belong to K-mart turned into the spot occupied by Zellers and that turned into the current home of Home Depot.

You are cunning and shrewd; I will give you that Home Depot. You are big and bold and have very high ceilings and big huge doors that open up for tiny people to walk through. But that is all part of your plan, isn’t it? You make everything so big that people assume they are getting a deal. $30 for a coat rack? Well, this is Home Depot, so it MUST be a good deal. There are no service people around; so that must mean the cost of hiring employees is cut to make the products cheaper. Right? WRONG! Oh, so, so, wrong. That cost goes into their fat pockets. Their fat pockets that continue to plump away while the naïve home renovators try to deduce what exactly is the difference between a seesaw hinge and a teeter hinge (I kid you not, two ‘official’ names for two very different types of hinges at the blood-sucking HD).

But you know what Home Depot? Despite my distaste for your conglomerate, big-box marketing plan; I cannot resist you. You are a big, overpriced eyesore; but you are open late, have almost everything I need; have those convenient automatic checkouts (that give cash-back! Sweet), and offer me spacious roaming grounds to buy more overpriced, over-ambitious tools and project kits that will never make any sense but at least you have a good return policy!

Home Depot, I know you are bad. You are the Wal-Mart of home renovations. But, I just can’t seem to get enough. You give me hope that my place will one day come together. You let me saw things and I don’t even have to buy them if I make ‘a mistake.’ You let me take as many paint samples as I want and poke and nudge as many displays as I please. You let me play on the dream computer a I build my model kitchen. You let me pretend I am the pizza delivery guy knocking when I am deciding which door I want.

You made me love you, and I hate myself for it! Home Depot, I wish I could quit you! But I can’t so, I’ll see you tonight!

XOX

Anna Nicole Smith (1967-2007)

What can I say about Anna Nicole Smith that hasn’t been said already, a million times, in a million different ways? Truthfully, nothing new. She was a trainwreck. She was cunning. She was a bimbo. She was a shrewd business woman. She was a success story. She was ladled with numerous setbacks. She was a walking, talking, breathing contradiction. She was what America loves, a triumphant success story. But she was plagued by her past; her demons, that I am sure not even Entertainment Tonight will ever fully comprehend.

She was a woman full of gusto and life and exuberance. She craved attention; from anyone and everyone; even if most of the time people were laughing at her. So what? She joined in on the fun and laughed right alongside them.

She was trashy and didn’t mind showing it. She embraced her roots and histrionics and tangled web of weight gain, death, bizarre behavior and numerous affairs with a non-challant air of indifference. Anna Nicole always seemed like she was part of an inside joke that nobody else was privy to.

Whether she was looking for sugar-pie on Halloween for her reality show, the Anna Nicole Show, or asking millions of viewers if "You like my booody?" on the American Music Awards; it always seemed like she was pulling one over on the entire world.

I think the first time I noticed Anna Nicole Smith was when she got that Guess Jeans campaign in 1992. Her resemblance to Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield is what got her the gig. She was a refreshing change from the bland and personality-free Claudia Schiffer-types.

I wouldn’t really say I was a fan of ANS. But I definitely was aware of her antics and setbacks. (Who wasn’t?) But her missteps and tragedies became greater and greater in severity. Her trials were no longer funny or bizarre but incredibly sad and tragic. Especially posthumously, you can’t help but feel some compassion for her misguided and anguished soul. She was funny and crazy but underneath it all she was unhappy and alone. And it’s so sad and morbid when all these random details of her private life are coming out of every corner. I can't even pay attention anymore. It is too weird and unreal and sad.

Maybe it is a little skewed to say that Anna Nicole was an icon. That is something that remains to be seen. The more bizarre stories that come to fruition following her death the greater the myth and conspiracy stories become. The greater her persona becomes. Maybe in death she will be able to emulate her idol, Marilyn Monroe. Like Marilyn she died too soon; immortalized and sexualized forever at 39.

Her story, ultimately, is a tragic one. All the money and weight loss and success she achieved led her only into deeper water with more sharks waiting to take advantage of her. She was unhappy. She was married, with a newborn daughter and buckets of money but she was still unable to reach happiness. I can barely keep up with all the creepy new developments and innuendo being spouted off daily regarding her life and death. (Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Husband? What!!!! Frozen sperm from her dead octogenarian husband? What!!!)

All these random and gross facts are leading us further away from the simple truth. The rags to riches story of Anna Nicole Smith is over. She is dead and leaves behind a young daughter and hundreds of people fighting for a piece of her money.

I should be FROM ROLLING STONE!!!!!

Okay, while I am blabbing on about MTV reality; I can not help but announce my thorough disgust for I’m from Rolling Stone. In this reality show, a group of eager music-lovers work as interns at Rolling Stone magazine. Now, I understand this is Rolling Stone, a magazine that sold it’s soul for a covershot of Jessica Simpson in her underwear claiming she was America’s hottest housewife. Whatevs. It is a stale music tabloid with one foot in the grave; but it still reigns as the most popular music mag in the world. It still the magazine where Kurt Cobain first proclaimed his love for Sonic Youth which led Kim Gordon and the boys into a higher tax bracket in a matter of minutes. It may not be the coolest magazine on the block anymore; but it’s still pretty fricking cool. Which is why it leaves me with such a sour taste in my mouth to see all these low-rent writer-wannabes foul and fumble their way through the greatest opportunity of any writer’s life.
None of them have been to journalism school. Three of them have lost their notebooks in the two episodes I’ve watched. Even the editors are like "They seem to be having problems adding quotes into their articles" WHAT? How is that even possible?

I’ll tell you how: Because they are all pretty-boy losers that are exploiting the one ounce of integrity that was left in music journalism. First of all, doesn’t it seem a bit retarded to have a reality TV show about a magazine. People watch on TV a show about putting together something we are supposed to READ? Okay, so that’s dumb. Then, the fact that they can’t write. That’s dumb. Then the fact that they go to all these free concerts and meet all these awesome artists and all they can do is fight with each other. Okay that is beyond dumb.

I mean if one of these schmucks actually ends up working at Rolling Stone how is the fact that he or she mooned the camera or didn’t know who George Clinton was going to effect their repertoire with artists and the readers? It’s not good.

Watching this show, makes me realize that so many people have such great jobs and they have no talent to back it up. Not Fair. I should be working at Rolling Stone; or NME, or Jane Magazine or Seventeen or Tiger Beat.

Dancelife is my new teen dream...actually they are not even teens so I don't have to feel guilty.....

There’s a lot of things I’ve wanted to blog about lately. The new job; the wait staff at John’s Place’ the paint guy at General Paints; the leaked Arcade Fire album (can you say, GOLDEN?!!??), my white sockettes; my parents’ old house that somehow manages to creep out multiple groups of adults ingesting copious amounts of illegal pharmaceuticals. But before I get on to any of that, stuff. I really have to talk about what’s really up: J.Lo’s DanceLife!

It is da bomb. I love it so much. Yes. Even more than Laguna, (maybe because I can picture myself as a struggling Puerto Rican dancer better than an over-privileged, rich, beauty queen). It is the best show. The music is sooo good, ( which by the way, includes a theme song by Young Love who I heard about 100 years ago and saw open up for Lady Sovereign). Like the music is undeniably good. So good that I spent a good 60 minutes of time at my new "high-pressure" job trying to get some track listings for each episode. To no avail, I might add. But the show is awesome.

Not only are there bitchy gay boys (Hi Blake, you sooo belong in the washroom line-up at celebrities complaining about how "like No one is here tonight,"); but there’s the resident heartthrob ( Kenny, dumb your girlfriend in the Pussycat dolls and go out with Nelly Furtado; you know she wants you. Don’t worry, her high-pitched hysterics will grow on you); the underdog ( Nolan, I can’t believe you didn’t get that job with MJB; your life is NO MORE DRAMA) and… well, there’s some chicks too but they are kind of boring so whatevs.

Everyone should watch this show. I don’t care if the Canadian guy is bitchy. He is hot and a great dancer. I don’t care if Kenny has this creepy South Boston accent. He is hot and a great dancer. I don’t care if Nolan is a drug addict. He is hot and a great dancer.

Do what’s good for you. Watch Dance Life. It’s like Laguna except the people are coloured and they shop at Forever 21 instead of Abercrombie & Fitch.